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14 Taiwan Development Perspectives 2009 Eligible voters went to the polls to elect a new Legislative Yuan and their president and vice president in early 2008. Taiwan’s two major parties began their campaigns of 2008 much earlier than were due. One reason was that President Chen Shui-bian had to win the two pivotal elections in a row in order to keep his Democratic Progressive Party in power for his political survival after his retirement. The legislative elections took place first. In the past, parliamentary elections were held in early December, at least three months before the Legislative Yuan met for its opening session in February in accordance with the Constitution. Chen wanted the new Legislative Yuan to be elected not too long before the presidential election. As a result, Chen had the legislative elections moved back to January 12, 2008 from the originally scheduled first week of December 2007. In his capacity as chairman of the ruling party, Chen kicked off the parliamentary campaign, which would be a warm-up for the presidential election of March 22, earlier than was necessary in an attempt to crush the precarious majority of the opposition bloc in the Legislative Yuan. He thought the ruling party had an even chance to win both legislative and presidential elections. Chen resorted to his wonted China-baiting tactic, wishing if provoked enough, Beijing would threaten to invade Taiwan, thereby so hardening the anti-Chinese feelings in Taiwan as to get all swing voters to vote for the Democratic Progressive Party. He first tried to abolish the National Unification Council and the Guidelines for National Unification. The council, created by President Lee Teng-hui in 1990, adopted the guidelines on August 1, 1992. The guidelines define “one China” with a different interpretation. To Beijing, that one China may be the People’s Republic of China with Taiwan as a “special administrative region” after reunification. Taipei, on the other hand, considers “one China” to mean the Republic of China, founded in 1912 and with de jure sovereignty over all of China. The guidelines prescribe a three-step process for Chinese reunification. Taiwan, according to this process, is now in the medium-term phase – a phase of mutual trust and cooperation – which features the establishment of channels of communication to usher in direct postal, transport and commercial links and an exchange of visits by government leaders between the two sides of the Strait. In the final phase, the two sides would establish a consultative organization for unification through which they will jointly discuss their task, while adhering to the goals of democracy, economic freedom, social justice and nationalization of the armed forces, and finally map out a constitutional system to establish a democratic, free and equitably prospering China. The guidelines provide the legal basis for the consensus of 1992, which is an agreement on “one China with a different interpretation.” And that is why President Chen was compelled to commit himself in two inaugural addresses not to abolish the council as well as the guidelines as part of his pledge not to change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. When President Chen made known his decision to terminate the council as well as the guidelines in 2006, the United States was greatly alarmed. Washington considered it a move to unilaterally change the status quo as it defines. The Department of State issued warning after grim warning, though China kept mum, preferring to watch the Americans trying rein in President Chen. The Chinese learned a lesson in 1996. Jiang Zeming threatened to war on Taiwan to intimidate the electorate ready to vote for President Lee Teng-hui. China did not like Lee to be reelected, but the threat backfired. Lee won a decisive victory. After months of frenetic consultations with Washington, Chen was finally able to have the council “cease to function” and the guidelines “cease to apply.” He claimed victory in effectively “terminating” both. De-Sinicization The next step President Chen took was an all-out drive to de-Sinicize Taiwan, of which a posthumous dethroning of President Chiang Kai-shek was a main feature. The time was right. He wanted to remind the people of how Chiang was involved in the February 28 Incident of 1947 on its sixtieth anniversary. As a starter,
Campaigns of 2008 and Beyond 15 he had the name of Chiang Kai-shek International Airport at Taoyuan changed. It is now called Taiwan International Airport at Taoyuan. Statues of President Chiang had to be removed from all military barracks and, if possible, from all public places. Streets bearing Chiang’s preferred given name Zhong-zheng (Mean-Uprightness) were renamed. On February 28, 2007, President Chen denounced Chiang Kai-shek as “the chief culprit” of the bloody massacre following spontaneous riots on February 27 six decades before. That was a false accusation, of course. Chiang, the generalissimo at that time, was too busily occupied in Nanjing with the civil war with Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army he was losing, certainly did not have any role to play in the slaughter of the innocent except that he granted the request by General Chen Yi, the administrator-general of Taiwan, for troop reinforcements from China for suppression of what was reported to him as an island-wide rebellion. As if on cue, Chen Chu, mayor of Kaohsiung, had the huge bronze statue of President Chiang’s, Taiwan’s largest of its kind, cut into pieces and carried to Taxi, where a small park keeps a collection of the generalissimo’s cast figures on display. There were two temporary mausoleums for Chiang and his son Chiang Ching-kuo at Cihu near Taxi. The Ministry of National Defense that has jurisdiction over them had them closed to the public. Chen also denounced Chiang Kai-shek as the “butcher” in the reign of white terror, which began in 1949 with Chen Cheng governing Taiwan as the chief administrator of the Southeast Region that also included Hainan Island. Chen Cheng declared martial law, which was finally lifted by President Chiang Ching-kuo in 1987. A dispute over the renaming of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei followed. The memorial, like Taipei 101 which is the world’s tallest building, is one of the top tourist attractions in the capital city. President Chen had it renamed the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall. The name of the main gate to the memorial park had to be changed. It had been named Da Zhong Zhi Zheng or Great Mean/Ultimate Uprightness. The second and last characters combined spelt the generalissimo’s preferred given name of Zhong-zheng. That was the only reason why the name had to be changed to Liberty Plaza. Kai-shek is a Cantonese transliteration of Jie-shi or Hard Stone in Mandarin. Chiang Kai-shek rose to power from Canton or Guangzhou, where he founded the Whampoa military academy that provided a military cadre for his Kuomintang army. With that army, Chiang unified China in 1927 and moved the Chinese capital from Beijing to Nanjing. Hau Long-bin, mayor of Taipei, fought against the renaming by designating the memorial as a historical site where no change of any kind is possible without his approval. President Chen had his minister of education downgrade the memorial to make an end run against the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Act, which had to be amended if the renaming was to be lawfully and officially completed. The end run worked and the name change was done. The upheaval was reported abroad, with the London-based Economist describing it as a small-scale cultural revolution, a miniature version of Mao Zedong’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” of the 1960s. Mao unleashed his Red Guards to destroy China’s Confucian legacy during the Cultural Revolution but President Chen had no Green Guards to unleash to further de-Sinicize Taiwan. All he could do was to require schoolchildren to study less Mandarin Chinese, which is a national language of the Republic of China as well as the People’s Republic and have history textbooks revised to deemphasize the Chinese origin of the people of Taiwan. Chinese history was eliminated as a subject of the civil service examination. Applicants for government jobs are tested on the history of Taiwan instead. Confucius’ birthday was revoked as a national holiday. His statue at the Ministry of Education was “mothballed.” Students were exempted from studying Chinese classics, Confucian classics in particular. As his wonted tactic failed to work wonders in boosting the Democratic Progressive Party’s voter
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